Quote

When he talked his eyes went away from mine and then he forced himself to look straight at me and he began to explain and I knew that he felt very strange with me and that he hated me, and it was funny sitting there and talking like that, knowing he hated me.

Jean Rhys

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Jean Rhys
Age: 88 †
Born: 1890
Born: August 24
Died: 1979
Died: May 14
Novelist
Writer
Ella Gwendolen Rees Williams
Ella Rees Williams
Felt
Strange
Forced
Away
Went
Hated
Look
Knew
Explain
Looks
Eyes
Began
Like
Knowing
Straight
Talking
Mines
Eye
Mine
Funny
Sitting
Talked

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She haunted him, as an ungenerous action haunts one.
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When I think about it, if I had to choose, I'd rather be happy than write.
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I hadn't bargained for this. I didn't think it would be like this - shabby clothes, worn-out shoes, circles under your eyes, your hair getting straight and lanky, the way people look at you. ... I didn't think it would be like this
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I must write. If I stop writing my life will have been an abject failure. It is that already to other people. But it could be an abject failure to myself. I will not have earned death.
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Now I no longer wish to be loved, beautiful, happy or successful. I want one thing and one thing only - to be left alone.
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If I was bound for hell, let it be hell. No more false heaven. No more damned magic.
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Human beings are struggling, and so they are egoists. But it's wrong to say that they are wholy cruel - it's a deformed view.
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Only the magic and the dream are true — all the rest's a lie.
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It is strange how sad it can be - sunlight in the afternoon, don't you think?
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Not that she objected to solitude. Quite the contrary. She had books, thank Heaven, quantities of books. All sorts of books.
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Age seldom arrives smoothly or quickly. It's more often a succession of jerks.
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All of writing is a huge lake. There are great rivers that feed the lake, like Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky. And then there are mere trickles, like Jean Rhys. All that matters is feeding the lake. I don't matter. The lake matters. You must keep feeding the lake.
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As it was in the beginning, ... is now, and ever shall be, world without end.
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I watched her die many times. In my way, not in hers. In sunlight, in shadow, by moonlight, by candlelight. In the long afternoons when the house was empty. Only the sun was there to keep us company. We shut him out. And why not? Very soon she was as eager for what's called loving as I was - more lost and drowned afterwards.
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We can't all be happy, we can't all be rich, we can't all be lucky - and it would be so much less fun if we were... There must be the dark background to show up the bright colours.
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Next week, or next month, or next year I will kill myself. But I might as well last out my month's rent, which has been paid up.
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It was like letting go and falling back into water and seeing yourself grinning up through the water, your face like a mask, and seeing the bubbles coming up as if you were trying to speak from under the water. And how do you know what it's like to try to speak from under water when you're drowned?
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Even the one moment that you thought was your eternity fades out and is forgotten and dies.
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I am the only real truth I know.
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There are always two deaths, the real one and the one people know about.
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